I’ve been struggling with this post for a while. Sometimes a truth is just too ugly, too painful, to face all at once. We have been railing against Donald Trump for so, so long, guys. So long. I felt it as a personal responsibility. I am skilled at reasoned debate. The facts were on my side. And I knew—I just knew—that if I broke it down enough different ways, in chunks of different shapes and sizes and language, eventually I would make his followers understand, much like the way a superb algebra teacher I once had got literally every student in class to eventually grasp binomials, simply by explaining it in every way possible until we all understood the concept.
I just hadn’t found the right way to explain the issues, because OF COURSE Trump is a disaster for the country.
Of course his ideas about the economy are unworkable.
Of course he’s threatening to unravel the very threads of our democracy.
Of course his ignorance of foreign policy and the concept of mutually assured nuclear destruction—not to mention the fact that he’s essentially Putin’s lapdog—are appalling.
Of course his own business acumen is questionable at best, with failed business after failed business and a bottom line that would have amounted to more if he’d just invested his father’s original “loan” in a modestly performing mutual fund.
Of course his practice of refusing to pay his creditors by default is evidence of both his failure as a businessman and his lack of personal integrity.
Of course he is about as Christian (a concept that does not matter to me, but it matters to some) as Darth Vader.
Of course he treats women as objects, to be abused at will.
Of course he is demonstrably less honest than … pretty much anyone else in the public eye.
Of course he is pandering to his followers and doesn’t mean a thing he says.
Except he does. There is one message that he delivers over and over and which actually corresponds to his actions on record, and his followers are not stupid at all. They understand exactly what he’s talking about. When Trump says he wants to make America great again, what he means is he wants to make America white again. And his followers know it. How do we know they know it? Because statistics show that racism is the one great unifying factor, after party identity, that his followers have in common. It’s not the economy or income level. (Though it’s true that rural areas are suffering economically, economic pessimism and income level do not predict whether someone will support Trump). It’s not foreign policy. It’s not education. It’s not taxation. It is opposition to racial equality.
America is slowly becoming more progressive and browner, and a bunch of white people out there find that concept terrifying.
But only the most deplorable will say that out loud, amongst family and friends and coworkers, because we all know that’s a terrible way to be. Instead, they keep their racism on the down-low and pretend to love that Trump “speaks his mind.” They pretend to believe in his economic plans. And they make excuse after excuse for his inexcusable behaviors.
Because they know that when it comes to white supremacy, he’s their guy.
Image credit: Flickr by user DonkeyHotey under a Creative Commons license.
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